Product description

Mark Twain once observed, A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on. His observation rings true: Urban legends, conspiracy theories, and bogus public-health scares circulate effortlessly. Meanwhile, people with important ideas business people, teachers, politicians, journalists, and others struggle to make their ideas stick.
Why do some ideas thrive while others die? And how do we improve the chances of worthy ideas? In "Made to Stick," accomplished educators and idea collectors Chip and Dan Heath tackle head-on these vexing questions. Inside, the brothers Heath reveal the anatomy of ideas that stick and explain ways to make ideas stickier, such as applying the human scale principle, using the Velcro Theory of Memory, and creating curiosity gaps.
In this indispensable guide, we discover that sticky messages of all kinds from the infamous kidney theft ring hoax to a coach s lessons on sportsmanship to a vision for a new product at Sony draw their power from the same six traits.
"Made to Stick "is a book that will transform the way you communicate ideas. It s a fast-paced tour of success stories (and failures) the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who drank a glass of bacteria to prove a point about stomach ulcers; the charities who make use of the Mother Teresa Effect; the elementary-school teacher whose simulation actually prevented racial prejudice. Provocative, eye-opening, and often surprisingly funny, "Made to Stick" shows us the vital principles of winning ideas and tells us how we can apply these rules to making our own messages stick."

Author information

Chip Heath is a professor of organizational behavior in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. He lives in Los Gatos, California.
Dan Heath is a Consultant to the Policy Programs of the Aspen Institute. A former researcher at Harvard Business School, he is a co-founder of Thinkwell, an innovative new-media textbook company. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Customer reviews

Why do some ideas seem to stick in your mind like velcro, while others fade away into the back of your mind?

Why do you remember urban myths but not the 52 states of America?

Dan and Chip Heath have written a great book that explains why some ideas stick and some don't and how you can get your messages to stick as well. They've basically searched through all the 'sticky' ideas and found many consistent themes in all of them:

1) They're Simple. Simple ideas stick, complex ideas don't. A grapefruit is like an orange sticks. A grapefruit is a citrus fruit that's about 4 inches in diameter and spherical in shape doesn't stick.

2) They're unexpected. Like a punchline of a funny joke, unexpected ideas jerk the brain into reversing and rehearsing. It makes the idea stick.

3) They're credible. Both Authorities and anti-authorities speaking on something are better than total strangers.

4) They're concrete. Vivid explanations like he brushed his teeth with a Darth Vader toothbrush stick. Not so vivid like he brushed his teeth in the morning don't.